The National Football League has agreed to pay $765 million to more than 4,500 retired players and their families who sued the league because they suffer from dementia and other long-term effects of head trauma, theThe New York Timesreports.The payment ...

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The National Football League has agreed to pay $765 million to more than 4,500 retired players and their families who sued the league because they suffer from dementia and other long-term effects of head trauma, the The New York Times reports.

The payment is actually a bargain for the NFL, which could have been forced to pay billions of dollars in liability payments if the lawsuit hadn't been settled, according to the Times. The $765 million will go towards compensation payments, medical exams, research and legal fees for the plaintiffs' lawyers, and will be available to all eligible retired players, even those who were not specifically named in the lawsuit.

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Payments will be distributed based on a player's age and years played in the league, the Times notes.

The NFL has denied that it intentionally misled or withheld information from players about the risk of potentially serious head injuries. The plaintiffs include former players and the families of deceased former players, who claim they suffered from afflictions including advanced dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease.

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